text:
Q: Show text annotations only above the line, not below I'm trying to get the text annotations in this line graph in matplotlib to show up above the line. I'm using the adjustText library to repel text from the line, but as seen in the image, some of the text is below the line. I based my code on the accepted answer here.
How can I get each annotation to appear above the line, connected to its point by a gray line? Some of them already are like this, but others are not.
x = list(df_usa['date'][61:-1].str.slice(5,)) # strings
x_range = np.arange(0, len(x))
y = list(df_usa['growth_factor'][61:-1])

plt.figure(figsize=(20,6))
plt.plot(x, y, color="red", alpha=0.5)
plt.xticks(np.arange(0, len(x), 5))

texts = [plt.text(x_range[i], y[i], round(y[i], 2)) for i in range(len(x))]

f = interpolate.interp1d(x_range, y)
f_x = np.arange(min(x_range), max(x_range), 0.005)
f_y = f(f_x)

# Generate non-overlapping data point labels
adjust_text(texts, x=f_x, y=f_y,
            only_move={'points': 'y', 'text': 'y'},
            force_points=0.15,
            autoalign='y',
            arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="-", color="gray", lw=0.5))

plt.show()

A: The current approach "prohibits" the points along the curve. An extension could be to also prohibit a band of points below the curve.
As your post doesn't seem to contain test data, here is an adaption of the example of the linked post:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from adjustText import adjust_text
import numpy as np
from scipy import interpolate

together = [(0, 1.0, 0.4), (25, 1.0127692669427917, 0.41), (50, 1.016404709797609, 0.41), (75, 1.1043426359673716, 0.42), (100, 1.1610446924342996, 0.44), (125, 1.1685687930691457, 0.43), (150, 1.3486407784550272, 0.45), (250, 1.4013999168008104, 0.45)]
together.sort()

text = [x for (x,y,z) in together]
eucs = [y for (x,y,z) in together]
covers = [z for (x,y,z) in together]

p1 = plt.plot(eucs,covers,color="black", alpha=0.5)
y0, y1 = plt.ylim()
plt.ylim(y0, y1+.1*(y1-y0))
texts = []
for x, y, s in zip(eucs, covers, text):
    texts.append(plt.text(x, y, s))

f = interpolate.interp1d(eucs, covers)
x = np.arange(min(eucs), max(eucs), 0.0005)
y = f(x)

# optionally show the band of "forbidden" points
# plt.scatter(x=np.tile(x, 5), y=np.concatenate([y-eps for eps in np.linspace(0, 0.01, 5) ]), alpha=.1)

plt.xlabel("Proportional Euclidean Distance")
plt.ylabel("Percentage Timewindows Attended")
plt.title("Test plot")
adjust_text(texts, x=np.tile(x, 5), y=np.concatenate([y-eps for eps in np.linspace(0, 0.01, 5) ]), autoalign='y',
            only_move={'points':'y', 'text':'y'}, force_points=.3,
            arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->", color='r', lw=0.5))
plt.show()


Michelle is a Toronto Personal Injury Lawyer that has dedicated her entire legal career to representing injured people and their family members. The focus of Michelle's practice is serious personal injury litigation including motorcycle accidents, car accidents, accident benefits disputes, slip and falls, disability insurance claims, gym negligence, dog attacks, school board negligence, and litigation over defective products.
Additionally, Michelle is a past Chair of the New Lawyers Division for the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association and has been a co-chair and lectured at conferences held by the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA) and the Canadian Society of Medical Evaluators. She has also written for the OTLA's Litigator magazine.
Michelle has represented her clients in many levels of Court including the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. She has also represented her clients before the Financial Services Commission of Ontario and Canada Pension Plan Tribunal.
Michelle applies a very hands on approach to her practice. She is dedicated to providing excellent service and results to her clients. Michelle is diligent in ensuring that her clients' claims are advanced in a manner that achieves maximum results. She has a proven track record of being a very effective and experienced advocate, obtaining favorable court rulings and settlements for her clients.
At the Top Toronto Personal Injury Law Firm of Jewell, Radimisis, Jorge LL.P., our staff can accommodate any language that you speak. Michelle is fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish.
A Top Toronto Personal Injury Lawyer. Contact Us Anytime!


A better way to manage your business with SSAB! Find available stock in your proximity and confirm the availability with your SSAB Sales representative directly within the portal. Here you can also search and download material certificates related to your orders.
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text:
A Twin mortar gets the range
There are power hitters who rip into the ball and send it screaming off like a tracer bullet, and then there are others who operate more like a mortar: whump, and the ball climbs 30 or 40 stories before descending into some poor bleacherite's seat like a fallen moon rock. Harmon Killebrew of Minnesota, who at the age of 36 is not what you would call a transient phenomenon, is in his 19th major league season as the archetypical mortar.
Week before last Mortar Killebrew was on target—he hit five homers in six games—but last week he was misfiring. "I asked Ralph Kiner once how long you can stay in the groove," says Killebrew, "and he said, 'Not many games.' "If anybody is ideally constructed to perform the essential task of lifting a ball over an outfield fence, Killebrew is. At 5'11" and 214 pounds, he also appears strong enough to hit home runs under water. In the next few games Harmon should pass Jimmy Foxx and Mickey Mantle on the alltime home run list. This will make him the second most prolific home run hitter in American League history and the most prolific right-handed one. Currently he has 534 homers, including 19 this season, and almost all of them, he says, have come in bunches.
Last year was the first in Killebrew's long career during which he played full time without hitting over 30 home runs (he was held to 28), and he started slowly again this season. He seemed to have trouble getting around on good fastballs the way he used to and he was frequently being referred to with that old epithet, "an aging star." Then suddenly he was back in stride. Just before the All-Star break Killebrew won the opener of a doubleheader against Milwaukee with a home run. Declining Manager Frank Quilici's invitation to take a rest in the nightcap, he cracked one more homer to give the Twins a 4-0 lead in another victory. After the break he hit a low-and-away Vida Blue fastball over the right-field fence, then three days later discovered enough substance in a Wilbur Wood knuckleball to turn it into the home run that beat Chicago 1-0.
But last week against the less-than-formidable pitching of the last-place Texas Rangers he found himself out of the groove again. He did hit what they call "a towering drive" against the wind to the centerfield warning track in Texas. Even though it was nothing more than an out, it provoked impressed oohs from a crowd that included members of the Mothers of Twins organization representing 232 sets of twins, five sets of triplets and one set of quads from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. One pair of 10-years-olds came up to Killebrew—who is a Twin and only looks like triplets—for autographs before the game. "How many homers have you hit, Harmon?" one twin asked in a small voice. When Harmon apparently failed to hear, the other twin stared at the huge autographing forearms and said, "I reckon it's a plenty of 'em."
What makes a slugger who has hit so plentifully go through ups and downs? Killebrew himself is inclined to let such a question stand as a mystery. He does so partly because he believes, reasonably enough, that no one can fathom, much less explain to a layman, exactly what the difference is between being in the groove and being out of it, and partly because he is reticent about what he considers intimate matters. "That's secret stuff you're getting into now," he said pleasantly when asked what adjustments he might be making in search of the groove. But he does reveal that "You wait better when you have the good feeling. You feel like you can wait a long time on a pitch and still get your weight completely behind it. Then, when the perfect timing slips and the ball starts beating the bat to that good leverage point, sometimes you try to quicken yourself up with your body. Then you get yourself into trouble."
Perhaps everyone has tried to quicken himself up with his body in some line of endeavor, but what exactly does that mean in hitting? Quilici, who took over as manager of the Twins about the same time Killebrew got into his most recent groove, offered some elucidation. "About all a manager can do for a hitter like Harm is make sure he knows how much confidence we have in him. And sometimes you can notice little things he is doing that he's done before when he wasn't going good," he said.
Quilici also reports that Killebrew, who hates to mention his injuries, has been bothered the past two seasons by an injury to his right, or toehold, foot. This infirmity increases his tendency to open up too soon when he strides—to pull his trunk around in order to give himself elbowroom. When the pitch is inside, this early opening may be a necessary part of pulling the ball. However, when the pitch is to the outside, the body must not be pulling away from it. The body has to wait.
But to do what Killebrew has to do, a batter must be stolid only up to a point. Then, at the last instant he must be preternaturally quick. People tend not to appreciate how resistant a thrown baseball can be. It comes in not only as a hopping, sinking, sailing or hooking will-o'-the-wisp but also as a ramming line of force. Killebrew is the kind of hitter who can pick a fastball off his chin, or chest, or wrists and jerk it out of a stadium. This is comparable to picking off a runaway outboard motor and in the same motion heaving it up a flight of stairs. Last Sunday he gave it the old metaphorical heave-ho, getting three hits, including a homer and a triple as the Twins split a doubleheader with the A's. Way to groove, Harm.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Just wanted to let everyone know that Edible East End has published its Low Summer 2007 issue recently.
It's one of my favorite local publications and the only one that I find myself reading cover to cover when a new issue comes out.
And, this marks the second vintage of my new EEE column "East End Oenophile." In this issue, I look at some of the first 2005 reds to hit the market and touch on the Italian and Italian-American influence on Long Island wine. I'm working on a larger feature story on that for another publication, so look for it soon.


Beautiful end unit townhouse on quiet cul de sac is move in ready! Interior features include mostly new Anderson replacement windows, pellet stove for economic heating, spacious master with WIC, bath with skylight, open first floor, and fresh paint throughout. The exterior is not your average townhome with large paver patio and wall out back overlooking the yard and matching walk way out front. The basement offers loads of storage and endless possibilities. Convenient to schools and easy quick access to highway and downtown. This house is ready to be called home!


text:
Q: GetX with PATCH method not working (Flutter) I'm building a function to change passwords for users.
The api used to change the user password is called via the PATCH method.
I tested the api using Postman and it worked fine.
The problem comes when I use the GetX library and call the api through it. I checked and found that the backend is not receiving the request. Where does the problem happen?
Here is my code:
ElevatedButton(
              onPressed: () {
                if (_key.currentState!.validate()) {
                  authController.changePassword(newPasswordEditingController.text).then((status) {
                    if (status.isSuccess) {
                      Navigator.pushNamedAndRemoveUntil(context,
                          doneResetPasswordScreenRoute, (route) => false);
                    } else {
                      // showCustomSnackBar("Error!");
                    }
                  });
                }
              },
              child: const Text("Change password"),
            ),

Method change password in AuthController:
Future<ResponseModel> changePassword(String newPassword) async {
      Response response = await authRepo.changePassword(getCurrentPassword(), newPassword);
      late ResponseModel responseModel;
      if (response.statusCode == 200) {
        authRepo.saveUserToken(response.body["token"]);
        authRepo.saveNewPassword(newPassword);
        responseModel = ResponseModel(true, response.body["token"]);
      } else {
        responseModel = ResponseModel(false, response.statusText!);
      }
      update();
      return responseModel;
    }

AuthRepo:
Future<Response> changePassword(String currentPassword, String newPassword) async {
    return await apiClient.patchData(AppConstants.CHANGE_PASSWORD_URI, {"passwordCurrent": currentPassword, "password": newPassword, "passwordConfirm": newPassword});
  }

ApiClient:
Future<Response> patchData(String uri, dynamic body) async {
    try {
      Response response = await patch(uri, body, headers: _mainHeaders);
      return response;
    } catch (e) {
      return Response(statusCode: 1, statusText: e.toString());
    }
  }

patch in ApiClient using GetX library. I checked in browser and it is not working.

Api working with Postman

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


On 17 December 1903, the Wright Brothers had their first controlled aircraft. The flying machine then was developed into a fixed wing aircraft by the brothers in 1904-05.
It was possible for the fix wing powered flight due to the aircraft control invention of the Wright Brothers.
The three-axis control was considered as the most important invention of the Wright Brothers, which contributed to the development of the aviation. The aircraft could be steered by the pilot while he could sustain the equilibrium.
The Wright Brothers earned their first patent in United States for their invention of aerodynamic control system for manipulating the surface of a flying machine. The brothers did not register it as a patent for flaying machine invention.
Wright Brothers had amazing mechanical skills because both spent a lot of time working with machines, motors, bicycles and printing presses.
The Wright Brothers developed a belief that it was possible to control and balance a flying machine with practice since an unstable vehicle like bike could be controlled. Find facts about aeroplane here.
The brothers had various glider tests in 1900 until 1903. The skill as a pilot was developed because of the extensive practice.
The brothers collaborated with Charlie Taylor to build their first airplane engine.
Their mother was Susan Catherine Koerner, while the father was Milton Wright. The birthplace of Wilbur and Orville was located in Millville, Indiana and Dayton, Ohio respectively. Get facts about the Air Force here.
When talking about the personal life, both never married.
Do you have any comment on facts about the Wright Brothers?


Once believed by the ancients to be eternal ice sent by heavenly Gods, clear quartz also had early scientists puzzled. Until the late 1500s, many scholars thought that this lovely stone was fossilized ice.
Stone Power is an Italian quarrier and manufacturer of top quality marble. Our quarries are located in Southern Italy and in particular in Puglia. Our production plant of Ruvo di Puglia, with a total extension of 100.000 square meters and a production capacity of 2.000 tons per month, is equipped with modern processing machines of the marble.
At SYPartners, we believe it is worthy work to envision, believe in, and fight for greatness. One leader, one person, one challenge at a time.
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Which Power Stone Are You?
· Ja hier diesmal das Power Stone Opening auf englisch, ich hab ja schon 2 versionen auf deutsch hochgeladen.
The Blarney Stone (Irish: Cloch na Blarnan) is a block of Carboniferous limestone built into the battlements of Blarney Castle, Blarney, about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from Cork, Ireland. According to legend, kissing the stone endows the kisser with the gift of the gab (great eloquence or skill at flattery ).
We are in the business of real-money trading for in-game gold, game keys, power-levelling and in-game items. PLS Game Mall was founded in 2008 with the duty of standardizing RMT (real-money trading) and also reducing the number of fraud instances in these transactions.
Blue Sapphire increases/enhances intuition, mental clarity and spiritual power, all of which can assist in personal and spiritual growth. A stone of spiritual healing and spiritual truth, Blue Sapphire is useful when channeling healing energies from the Angelic Realm or a higher source.
iQ Power Tools is the leading manufacturer of dustless masonry, tile and concrete power tools for the construction industry. Decades of experience taught us about dust problems. It makes a huge mess, it costs a great deal of money, and it's a threat to the health and safety of our industry.


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Can Digital Competence Save Youth From Unemployment?
by Ilona Griniute
The European economic crisis that started in late 2009 gave way to high rates of unemployment, especially among young people. Beginning this year, the European Commission estimated that over 5 million young people aged 15-24 were unemployed. Youth unemployment has been in the spotlight of European policy makers and governmental institutions trying to solve the enigma by proposing numerous actions to tackle unemployment that is part of European recession.
Almost every second youth in Greece or Spain are unemployed. Similar numbers are exhibited in Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, and Portugal. Other European countries struggle with over 20% of unemployment while the EU average still stands at 20.7% as of June 2015. What makes it so difficult for young people to find jobs? Are there not enough jobs available? Are youth not competent for available vacancies in the labor market?
Companies go online – jobs go digital
A significant part of business has moved online and having e-commerce whenever possible is essential to many companies and organizations. In addition, a mobile presence is evolving as another main channel to attract customers, to get them to buy services or simply access information anywhere, anytime. An estimated 3 billion mobile users are counted today. This is almost half of the planet's population.
That being said, many changes have been brought into certain job functions, for instance, marketing and communications now requires an extensive digital skill set. Additionally, we have seen new job titles springing up like mushrooms after the rain: starting with community and social media managers moving to SEO consultants, web analytics developers, mobile marketers and growth hackers. These are just some of the "digital" positions that are in demand and sought after by many employers. Yet do we know of any universities offering programs aligning with these positions?
Are youngsters prepared?
Naturally, new jobs require new skills. Recent numbers reveal that 95% of 16-24 year olds in Europe are regular internet users. In some countries 9 out of 10 youngsters use a mobile device to connect to the internet on the go. But, people mistakenly think the youth of our generation have the right skills simply by surfing the Internet or knowing how to use social media networks. Very often young people are labelled as "digital natives", but will everyday ICT skills acquired through social networks help them in a workplace?
A lot of research has recently taken place in different countries to determine the level of digital competence among youth. One study shows that 42% of young Italians weren't aware of security risks when connecting to Wi-Fi. When it comes to more technical competences, 19 % of young Europeans were reported to have used a computer programming language. Only 7% of young Austrians have very good computer skills. Another survey among kids aged 9-10 suggests that two in three kids cannot say they know more about the Internet than their parents. So this leads me to think that educational systems and current school curriculum must be revised and improved to be able to prepare a growing generation for new jobs like SEO, coding or mobile marketing.
Changes in education are necessary
There is no single solution to youth unemployment in Europe. As much as it's the responsibility of any young person to work out the right competences and get ready for the labour market, it's also the educational system that needs to provide kids with the first knowledge of ICT and even coding. It is important that schools encourage their students to choose studies that are adequate to the demands dictated by the technological revolution and current job markets.
Yet, it's not only about introducing new courses as part of curriculum. Current teachers need to be trained in the latest ICT skills too – and taught how to make ICT classes attractive to kids, both boys and girls. Besides, the gender stereotype that ICT or coding is for boys needs to be overcome. The first place to start is at home.
All eyes are turning to coding, which is seen as a trans-discipline that can boost both teaching and learning. For many years coding skills were wrongly perceived as something useful for IT professions only. In fact, knowing how to code helps you understand how the modern world works given the increasing number of automatized processes and services around us, and machines and devices that we use at home. Introducing the basics of ICT in schools isn't sufficient anymore. Kids must be taught more and taught how to put their coding skills into practice. While schools are slowly awakening and catching up, after-school clubs and volunteer movements like CoderDojo, Rails Girls or code.org are patching the hole. What is next?
digital jobs, digital skills, European Commission, European Union, ICT education, Youth unemployment
About the Author / Ilona Griniute
Ilona Griniute is a Content Marketeer, Communicator and Tea Blogger who has worked in private and non-profit sectors. Currently she is exploring NGOs and communicating on ICT empowerment, digital inclusion & social innovation. Originally Lithuanian for the past five years Ilona has lived in Austria, Denmark, Germany and now is settling in Belgium.
Claude Forthomme
Thanks for drawing attention to this continuing drama that affects all generations (the parents too!). This is a problem in America as well. Bernie Sanders made waves two days ago when he said that unemployment among African-American youth reached 51% and Hispanics 36% – numbers about as bad as in Europe! And according to the International Business Times, the world faces a "tsunami of youth unemployment" in the coming decades, as you can see in this Thingser post http://thingser.com/post/8243
Ilona Griniute
Hi Claude, thank you for sharing some more global insights into the topic. Indeed these numbers around the world don't look promising yet… Do you know of any concrete measures that the US government is taking to tackle this problem?
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The business of representation in recent history in Ikono/Ini has been plagued by tales of lack of capacity, insensitivity to the challenges of the people, gross ineptitude and excuse giving. The average Ikono/Ini person would accede to the fact that neglect and selfishness on the part of previous leadership at all levels and absence of federal presence in the constituency partly accounts for the decay and undevelopment the area is faced with.
From the corporate world of professional service, emerged a man dead to self, fully aware of the cry of the common man and poised to arrest the rot, howbeit from his purse as it were. Emmanuel Ukpong-Udo's unquenchable passion and commitment to the growth and alleviation of the suffering of the common man is expressed in the number of his constituents benefiting from his empowerment scheme and other unannounced humanitarian gestures. His intimidating liberality is second to none and is heralded across the length and breadth of the State.
Characteristic of the nine ungrateful lepers, some of these beneficiaries whose lives he transformed have turned to stab him in the back out of sheer greed and selfish interest, yet he has remained undaunted in his quest to touch lives. Suffice it to say he is given to the Ministry of "help", an endeavour that endears him to his people and that which he enjoys and views as a divine calling. All these over the years he has achieved without an appointment, political office, allocation power or marked out constituency funds.
Fast forward to his emergence as the people's democratic party standard bearer for the Ikono/Ini House of Representatives seat, a feat achieved amidst stiff competition, he seeks to represent the constituency on the premise of a well articulated 7-point agenda covering 4 action-laden years. Taking a cursory look at the agenda, one would acknowledge that it realistically addresses the problem spots of the constituency from a highly informed insider position such as human capital development, job and wealth creation, women and youth reorientation/empowerment etc. How wouldn't he know the deepest yearnings of his people when he dwells with, wines and dines with them as a culture.
Taking a look at educational standing as one of the sure foundations of effective representation, Ukpong-Udo beats other candidates by miles. He holds two Masters degrees from the United Kingdom and would in 3 months round up his doctorate programme in England. He is both an international health and safety consultant and an international chartered fellow in health & safety. As at his birthday on 2nd Dec 2018, he is the only Nigerian with these qualifications. Suffice it to say, he holds the highest health and safety qualification in Nigeria. This is a material Ikono/ini people are proud of.
Aside having an amiable antecedent going for him and being the most schooled among the 7 candidates vying for the position in Ikono / Ini, the office requires far more than capacity and connections. Divine grace is paramount in gaining favour, prominence and general acceptability and Emmanuel Ukpong-udo comes saturated with loads of that ready to combat the perennial challenges that bedevil the constituency.
The task of liberating Ikono/Ini and restoring it's lost glory is not such that a newbie who knows little to nothing about the area should be tasked with. Some candidates who cared less about the progress and wellbeing of Ikono/Ini prior to elections have turned up from nowhere and mocked Ikono/Ini people playing on our collective sensibility with medical outreaches, sponsored football matches and road gradings. But the people see the mediocrity and selfishness masked by those acts of grandstanding. The people know their own and who the cap best fits and come February the 16th, their votes will send a resounding message.
A vote for Emmanuel Ukpong-Udo is a vote for progress, prosperity and development.


Audrey Johns is a blogger and cookbook author with an amazing story. She lost 150 pounds by eating real food and cooking at home. She is here today to talk about her new book, Lose Weight by Eating Detox Week.
Thank you I shall look out for her. I have been cutting out caffeine and sugar and have found a massive difference (I've lost almost a stone in a month) so really interested in finding out more about clean eating. It's true though it's the convenience that gets me.
I love that she eats whole food. Congrats to her for succeeding in the weight loss.
I am going to have to check out more about Audrey's journey and her book! This sounds really fabulous. I love that she authored a book called "lose weight by eating"!
These are such great ideas!! I love to sneak spinach in my kids smoothies. They don't even have a clue and I feel like I am totally winning!!
Whole, clean foods is the way to go! I am in the middle of a detox and I see a lot of similarities!
This was a great read. I will look her up and check out the book. Her weight lost was amazing. Clean eating is key.
Great tips. I love that she ditched processed stuff and went for whole and fresh food. That's 1/2 the battle right there- thanks for sharing!
Oh I can't wait to check out this episode! Sounds like a good one.
Eating clean and portion control are the key. Eliminating process food does wonders.
I agree that clean eating makes a lot of difference and helps in staying healthy. Also avoiding processed foods from our diets is very important. Thanks for this information.
I know some people who try to starve themselves to lose weight and they seem to gain it. They need to do as she does and maintain their portions and I'm sending this post to one of them. I'm afraid the other would be offended, lol.
This is helpful for people like me. I will check it out and learn from it.


I have interviewed dozens of female politicians in my time, and the thing that stands out is how different they are from other women. In that one respect they are just like male politicians who, when you meet them, come across as a race apart from ordinary mortals. First and foremost, they are doers. There's none of that second-guessing, procrastinating, or introspection that holds the rest of us back. Obstacles only make them try harder. To a woman (or man) they radiate a special combination of ego and energy that seems to propel them faster and higher than everyone else.
In the United States, there is no better example of this all-conquering breed than Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, the first female Speaker of the House and the highest-ranking political woman in American history. As she strides towards my table in the restaurant of the Regency Hotel in Manhattan, immaculately presented in powder blue, smile at the ready, it is like being drawn into a powerful tractor beam. When she speaks she's so loud and full of purpose, it's mesmerizing. Despite her slight stature, Pelosi has a diaphragm that could hit you at a thousand paces.
Nor do I know many septuagenarians that are as plugged in to popular culture as she is. Though Pelosi denies having the slightest idea about any of the celebrities featured in the glossies ("Who's Brad? Who's Jessica, I mean Angelina?" she jokes), the list of Hollywood actors – like Ben Affleck and his wife Jennifer Garner – who have made pilgrimages to her office is impressive. It's safe to say that she probably knows everyone who is anyone in America – but on a business level rather than the 'I schmooze, you schmooze; let's do the glitzy gala circuit rumba' kind of way.
It's only when she talks about her five children and nine grandchildren, do you realize that – after Queen Elizabeth II – Pelosi must be the world's most powerful grandmother. She is certainly the most effective; just ask any of her party's Democratic members of Congress how often they've tried to rebel during her 13-year leadership. Supporting that megawatt charm of hers are kitten heels of steel.
When I last spoke with Pelosi it was 2013 and she was in a triumphant mood, having helped orchestrate the highest ever intake of Democratic congresswomen. For the 113th Congress there were 98 female members out of 535, two thirds of them House Democrats. Back then, Pelosi had plans. She and the sisterhood were going to change the way Congress operates. Unfortunately, the 2014 Congressional elections resulted in the Republicans gaining their biggest House majority since 1928, leaving those plans to gather dust on the shelf. But it won't come as a surprise to hear that Pelosi betrays no hint of anxiety about the Democrats' precarious chances for 2016. Once we start talking about politics there's no stopping her. She is like one of those tanks that can only GO forward.
ON THE OTHER HAND, PELOSI MAY BE professionally driven and focused but she isn't a machine. She claims to do no exercise at all (unlike the rest of her family, "it's the air that they breathe," she says), but she does admit to getting up very early: "I'm one of those people that hoots with the owl". She goes for early morning strolls making work calls as she walks. "So I'm not wasting time," she explains. Her aids probably have to trot to keep up with her.
They adore Pelosi though, and some of them have been working for her for years. She demands excellence, but then she drives herself hard, too. Part of her lack of interest in shopping is that she is too busy to think about anything outside of work. "My kids keep saying, 'You should have somebody [a stylist] to help you. Anyone else would have somebody help them. You travel so much.'" But it's just a pipe dream. Instead, Pelosi relies on systems that half-help, half-hinder her and turn her constant traveling into an ongoing nightmare of logistics.
DOES SHE THINK WOMEN OF HER ILK ARE MADE OR BORN? FROM HER GRIMACE, I SUSPECT SHE HAS BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY, MANY TIMES. STILL, IT'S A FAIR ONE. Pelosi comes from a political family – she attended her first Democratic National Convention when she was 12. There's a famous photograph of her, aged 17, looking fetching in a taffeta dress, standing next to then Senator John F. Kennedy at the United Nations Association of Maryland dinner in Baltimore. Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., was the son of Italian immigrants. He started out selling insurance before moving into politics. He served four terms in Congress and ended up as the longtime Mayor of Baltimore. Pelosi was brought up in the city's tight-knit Italian Catholic community where almost everyone was related by blood or marriage. Home life was dominated by five older brothers. "In trying to contain me," she says, "they toughened me up".
"Big Tommy", as her father was known, allegedly kept a ledger of every political transaction, no matter how small, for use come election day. He was a political fixer with a strong moral backbone – a description that could just as easily be used for Pelosi.
Yet her transition from "little Nancy" to the number three spot in US politics – behind the President and Vice President – was hardly straightforward; and it's important to remember that she started out in life as a capable but dutiful Catholic bride. Pelosi didn't become a politician until she was 47. At Trinity, a small Catholic college in Washington, she met Paul Pelosi, an ambitious student from San Francisco who was studying at the Jesuit-RUN Georgetown University. They married in 1963, a year after she graduated. Her ambition to go to law school was derailed by the arrival of their first child.
Pelosi was, in fact, doing quite a lot (all of it unpaid and behind the scenes), as a volunteer for the California Democratic Party, which she would ultimately end up running as its first woman chairman. Notwithstanding the challenges of motherhood, as well as running a large house in the upmarket Presidio Terrace district, Pelosi soon made herself indispensable to the Democrats as a quiet but efficient fixer. She became the go-to hostess for fundraisers, meet-and-greets, and networking events. When Governor Jerry Brown (a high school friend of her husband's), ran against Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, he asked the couple to help him secure Maryland. Pelosi, who was 36 at the time and had just sent her youngest child to kindergarten, offered to run the campaign herself.
Pelosi won her San Francisco seat in Congress in 1987, after a particularly vicious by-election. The rolling hills of San Francisco may seem a world away from the gritty streets of Baltimore, but beneath the surface they share many similarities – not least in the religious and ethnic diversity of their constituents. Pelosi was attacked every which way, but what rankled, according to friends, were the accusations that she was a rich dilettante looking for a new place to shine. She arrived in Washington determined to prove her detractors wrong.
As a Democrat, Paul Pelosi's money was potentially the more toxic of the black marks against her. Indeed, over the years, the Pelosi wealth has been the subject of considerable interest – and some carping. But Congress members are only required to disclose the widest possible range of their personal fortunes. According to Bloomberg, the Pelosis are known to have somewhere between $42 and $200 million in assets. Even if it's the lower number, it still puts her near the top of the Congressional "rich list". When I query Pelosi about her fortune she looks stunned, as if this isn't a question often asked to her face. "I don't have that much wealth," she shoots back, which suggests she may have spent too much time among the nearby denizens of Silicon Valley.
Ironically, Pelosi's particular brand of liberal politics was also a potential stumbling block. Her views haven't changed in nearly three decades, and if they seem mainstream now, back then – considering her own socially conservative Catholic background – they were jaw-droppingly radical. She is and has always been a fervent supporter of the right to abortion, women's equality, LGBT rights, the environment, gun control, and even legalizing marijuana (for medicinal use).
When she talks about her stance on abortion, it is with a great deal of sensitivity towards those, including members of her own family, whose personal beliefs are opposed to hers. When fighting on the floor, however, Pelosi has never given an inch over women's reproductive rights even when other members have referred to her as "the whore of the House". That was in the 1980s, when in 1987 there were just 22 women to 413 men in the House. Americans might have loved the idea of Joan Collins playing the take-no-prisoners Alexis Carrington on Dynasty, but they weren't quite ready for a real woman to do the same in Washington.
Pelosi was one of the earliest advocates of HIV/AIDS sufferers. "My first comments on the floor of the House, were about fighting HIV/AIDS," she says. "People said, 'Why would you want to be known for that? Your first words on the floor of the House.' 'Well,' I said, 'why are you even saying that to me? People are dying.'" But behind her combative public stance was a genius for working the corridors of power, which she'd learned from her father. She climbed the ranks, moving up from one House Committee to the next, working harder and longer than her colleagues. More important, was her astounding ability to fundraise on behalf of the party: a staggering $400 million to date, far outstripping the efforts of her rivals. Armed with one of the safest seats in the country, Pelosi could direct all her energies to helping others.
Pelosi's ability to raise money was one of the reasons her fellow House Democrats elected her leader in a secret ballot in 2002. But the other is based on her formidable skills as a party politician. Pelosi claims to have her members' support because she has no secret agenda: "I'm a legislator, my commitment is there. I'm working with great people, and that's part of my, shall we say, salesmanship about who's running our political operation, who's running our messaging operation, who's doing these things, and showcasing what our resources are." The truth is more complicated of course. Whether in or out of power, Pelosi has run the House Democrats like the praetorian guard, expecting and receiving near total loyalty.
In June 2009 when President Barack Obama was facing certain defeat in the House over his Clean Energy Bill, Pelosi stepped forward and, in a performance worthy of the TV political series House of Cards, strong-armed, cajoled, and bargained her way into getting the necessary votes. Without her, the Administration would have been humiliated. A year later, Obama needed her again, this time to maneuver his revolutionary but controversial health care bill (The Affordable Health Care Act) past stiff opposition. With the next election cycle looming, Democrats were running scared. Pelosi went all out, resorting to a scorched earth policy to get the votes. In the end the Bill squeaked through with a majority of seven.
But all this chatter about Clinton's prospects for 2016 doesn't mean that Pelosi lacks ambition for herself. She wants to have a role in international politics, even if her forays into foreign policy haven't always been successful. Criticized in 2007 for interfering with the Bush Administration's containment strategy of Syria, nowadays Pelosi is careful to stay in line with the White House. But the mask slips slightly when I ask her whether she could imagine the U.S. sending troops to fight ISIS. "No," she says categorically. "I don't see it." Pelosi voted against the Iraq War, and it appears as though she regards any sort of combat operation as beyond America's purview, regardless of any future White House requests from Congress for military authorization in the Middle East. Her stance will disappoint America's international allies who fear that the world is a more dangerous place without US leadership. But it's a popular one among Pelosi's liberal base – and true to her values.
It's not often that I want to drink coffee and hang out with a politician. But when it's time for Pelosi to leave I feel an odd sense of deflation. She is so much fun to talk to; her optimism is infectious, especially when she discusses her hopes for women. "We have this crusade," she says. "When women succeed, America succeeds. Because it's true." Yes, I think, sign me up. I guess I've just had a dose of her secret sauce.
Intelligence Squared: What Next for Feminism?
Podcast – Intelligence Squared: What Next for Feminism?


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SFA vacates designated wins, championships of programs affected by NCAA postseason ban
The ban was issued for football, men's basketball and baseball.
Author: Reagan Roy
Published: 10:24 AM MDT May 20, 2020
NACOGDOCHES, Texas — Stephen F. Austin State University administrators and coaches have released statements in response to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) issuing postseason bans for three men's sports.
The ban, which was announced on Tuesday, is for men's basketball, football and baseball after the NCAA says the programs "failed to meet the minimum four-year cohort APR score of 930 needed to avoid penalties."
RELATED: NCAA bans SFA men's football, basketball, baseball from postseason due to academic progress report
SFA issued the following statement after the ban was announced:
Today, the NCAA publicly released Academic Progress Report (APR) scores for all Division I athletic programs, including Stephen F. Austin. These four-year cohort APR scores began with the 2015-2016 academic year. As noted in its release, three SFA sports programs (men's basketball, football and baseball) failed to meet the minimum four-year cohort APR score of 930 needed to avoid penalties. As a result, these programs must serve the Level I APR penalties, which include a reduction in countable practice hours and a one-year postseason ban. The University has been approved to delay the men's basketball postseason ban until the 2021-22 season, while football and baseball will serve their bans during the 2020-21 academic year.
Beginning in 2013, an athletics department administrative error in the academic certification process resulted in the miscalculation of SFA's reported APR scores. Once the administrative error was identified and corrected, the APR scores of these three programs fell below the 930 threshold. Procedures are now in place to prevent a reoccurrence of the error.
The athletics department has been focused on academic progress and is proud of its current student athletes who collectively earned a 3.21 GPA for the spring semester.
On Wednesday, SFA Athletic Director Ryan Ivey also released a statement:
This has certainly been a challenging time for all of us, and our thoughts continue to be with you and your families. Together, as a university community, a state, a nation and a world, we are confident that we will get through this and thrive once again.
Today, we write to you on a different matter, sharing difficult news regarding our athletics program, and we do so under the premise of our Athletics Department's core values: Accountability, Excellence, Integrity, Innovative and Teamwork, as that it what you deserve. Today, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), publicly announced a Negotiated Resolution agreement with Stephen F. Austin regarding several NCAA rules infractions concerning student eligibility that occurred from 2013-2019.
Let us begin by sharing with you the origins of the matter.
In the Spring of 2019, a member of our athletics department discovered that the process by which our student-athletes were being certified as academically eligible was not properly accounting for all NCAA requirements.
The primary issue was that former department personnel responsible for the certification process were incorrectly counting all semester credit hours to determine academic eligibility instead of counting only degree-applicable credits, as prescribed by NCAA rules. This error--and other similar errors-- resulted in 82 student-athletes being improperly certified for competition over a period of six years, from 2013 to 2019, meaning 82 student-athletes competed while ineligible for SFA in the sports of football, men's basketball, baseball, volleyball, softball, women's golf, men's and women's track & field and men's cross country. The athletics department personnel responsible for the incorrect certifications are no longer a part of SFA Athletics.
After identifying these errors, the University immediately reviewed the academic standing of all current student-athletes and, when warranted, filed for and secured student-athlete reinstatement eligibility by the NCAA, clearing the students for competition.
Shortly after the discovery of the issue, the University retained outside legal counsel to work with the institution and the NCAA to determine the facts and scope of the potential violations. Once that review was completed, SFA and the NCAA staff came to an agreement on sanctions through a Negotiated Resolution. The NR is a process offered by the NCAA to resolve infractions cases when the facts are not in dispute, which is the case in our matter. This route saved the University time and financial resources, but most importantly, lessoned the risk of more severe penalties if the University had opted to proceed through the traditional infractions process.
Ultimately, the institution and the NCAA agreed that the improper certification of 82 student-athletes for competition was a Level I violation. The University also acknowledged that it failed to exercise institution control when it did not detect or remedy the errors in a timely manner, given that in 2014, the NCAA had warned the institution through a standard review of academic progress data to strengthen its academic certification processes and it failed to do so.
The Level I (Mitigated) sanctions agreed upon by the NCAA and Stephen F. Austin include the following:
Three years of probation;
Public reprimand and censure;
A fine of $5,000 plus one-half of one percent of the total budgets for football and men's basketball;
The return of 50 percent of the University's financial share earned from participation in the 2016 NCAA Tournament;
The forfeiture of all records and contests in which an ineligible SFA student-athlete competed, which includes 29 football victories from 2013-2019; 117 men's basketball victories from 2014 to 2019; 112 baseball victories from 2015 to 2019; 31 softball victories from the 2018 season; and adjusted conference championship scores from women's golf, women's track and field, men's cross country and men's track and field.
Included in the vacation of wins are conference championships in men's basketball in 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2017-18, as well as the program's First Round win in the 2016 NCAA Tournament. The banners recognizing those achievements will be removed from William R. Johnson Coliseum.
A 2.5% reduction in financial aid awards (scholarships) in football for 2020-2021 and 2021-2022; a 5% reduction in baseball in either 2020-21 or 2021-2022 and the loss of one scholarship in men's basketball in either 2020-2021 or 2021-22.
Prior to the conclusion of the probationary period, the institution will submit to a data review with APP staff.
Again, on advice of counsel and after deliberate internal discussions, agreeing to a Negotiated Resolution was the fastest way to put this behind us and ultimately, to reduce the risk of more severe penalties (i.e., postseason bans, recruiting restrictions) that would have severely set back certain sports programs.
Unfortunately, there are additional significant ramifications for some of our athletic programs related to the NCAA violations involving improper eligibility certification.
In 2003, the NCAA instituted the Academic Progress Rate (APR), which holds institutions accountable for the academic progress of its student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term. Student-athletes who are meeting requirements for academic progress towards a degree and remain at their original institution help bolster the APR score (out of 1000), while those who transfer out, fail to meet academic progress towards a degree or otherwise do not return to the institution decrease a team's APR score. While there is an annual APR score for each team released publicly, the NCAA reviews four-year cohorts of APR scores to provide a more accurate picture of a team's academic standing. If a team's four-year APR falls below 930 in any given year, that program is banned from participating in postseason play the following season.
For the 82 SFA student-athletes discovered through the enforcement matter who were improperly certified as eligible, the information previously submitted for APR purposes required adjustment. After making changes to reflect the NCAA requirements for credits, the APR scores for three of our teams fell below the 930 threshold.
In conjunction with standard NCAA APR penalties, three of our teams that fell below the 930 threshold will serve their postseason penalties during the upcoming 2020-2021 or 2021-22 seasons, allowing our coaches and student-athletes to move forward as soon as possible. Therefore, the SFA football team is prohibited from participating in the 2020 postseason; the men's basketball team will not participate in the postseason in 2021-22; and the baseball program will also be prohibited from participating in the postseason in the spring of 2021. The University will file a request for a conditional waiver to the NCAA for suspension of future years of postseason restrictions, as the APR score for some of our teams may remain below 930 in subsequent years due to the four-year rolling score. In similar cases, waivers have been granted based on signs of academic and APR improvement by the involved sports program.
We understand that the tremendous young men and women in our athletic programs are paying a steep price for the administrative mistakes by former staffers, but they will have our complete and unwavering support in the days and months ahead.
Our actions since the discovery of the improper certifications in 2019 demonstrate our unwavering commitment to integrity and fair play and our willingness to hold ourselves accountable for our actions. In fact, the NCAA enforcement staff and Committee on Infractions recognized this commitment in the Negotiated Resolution by crediting our "exemplary cooperation" in the investigation and citing SFA as a "model for other institutions" facing similar violations.
We are a stronger university today because of our actions and our values and we look forward to the next chapter of Lumberjack Athletics.
"The athletic department personnel responsible for these violations are no longer a part of SFA Athletics," SFA President Dr. Scott Gordan said. "I also want to make it clear that these violations occurred before our current leadership in athletics arrived and I know the athletics administration has been fully transparent with the NCAA and has been working hard to identify any and all violations. I have full confidence in our Athletic Director and new compliance personnel and have worked very closely with them to put measures in place that will significantly reduce the risk of this type of violation from occurring again. These measures include the hiring of an assistant to work with our compliance officer for eligibility checks and identifying a lead NCAA eligibility staff member in the Office of the Registrar who will be housed outside of the athletics program. Additionally, I have revamped our Athletic Council to have broader campus representation, increased faculty membership, and greater external oversight."
SFA head football coach Colby Carthel was hired to lead the Lumberjacks football program in December 2018.
RELATED: SFA introduces Colby Carthel as its new head coach
RELATED: Texas A&M-Commerce's Colby Carthel to be named new head football coach at SFA
Coach Carthel released he following statement regarding the ban:
"This post-season ban is a result of mistakes made in the past and doesn't represent the current culture of SFA Football. When we took the program over, we inherited a team with a 2.06 GPA. However, through the hard work of our student-athletes and new academic support team, this spring semester our team achieved a 3.11 GPA! That academic success will continue into the future. I believe in these student-athletes, our current coaches, staff, and administration. There are some great days on the horizon for SFA Football, and we're all excited to continue building this program into a champion!"
In April 2016, SFA hired Kyle Keller as the head men's basketball coach. Now, entering his fifth season at the helm of the Lumberjack basketball program, the Lumberjacks are coming off of one of the best single seasons in program history. The Lumberjacks posted a remarkable 28-3 record, a 19-1 conference mark, and pulled off one of college basketball's biggest upsets of all time with a victory over top-ranked Duke University at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Under the tutelage of Keller, who was named Coach of the Year, senior guard Kevon Harris was unanimously named Southland Conference Player of the Year, joining teammates Gavin Kensmil (Second Team) and John Comeaux (All-Defensive) on the All-Conference Teams.
The Lumberjacks likely would've made it to the 2020 NCAA Tournament, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, "March Madness" was canceled.
RELATED: SFA's Harris wins Southland Conference Player of the Week after winning shot against No. 1 Duke
RELATED: AxeEm: SFA takes down No. 1 Duke 85-83
"I am disappointed on many fronts, not only for our men's basketball student-athletes, but for the other sports affected by this ruling today, as well as our great fans and alumni," Coach Keller said regarding the postseason ban. "Neither this current basketball roster and coaching staff, nor myself have been implicated in any violations or findings by the NCAA. That being said, I acknowledge and respect the NCAA's decision to levy this punishment due to improper advisement by our previous academic staff to a group of student-athletes. As a department under the direction of our current Director of Athletics, Ryan Ivey, we have all worked diligently to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity and will continue to do so. As long as I remain the head coach of the SFA men's basketball program, we will continue to exemplify those standards of excellence both on and off the court. Both our future and present remain extremely bright at SFA. Axe Em 'Jacks!"
The 2020-21 season will be the 13th season for baseball coach Johnny Cardenas leading the Lumberjacks on the diamond.
RELATED: TJC's Peyton Miller, SFA's Alex Palmer picked up in MLB Draft
RELATED: SFA offers baseball field for Alto's last home game
Through his first decade in charge, Cardenas directly oversaw three of the program's five seasons of 30 or more wins, stands as the program's all-time winningest coach and has prepped nine of the program's 19 MLB Draft picks.
Cardenas also released a statement on the ban:
"Due to our APR team score as released by the NCAA this week, the Lumberjack baseball program will receive a postseason ban for the upcoming 2020-21 season. While this is a blow to our team and program, we stand together in our resolve to show how strong our leadership can be during these difficult times. Our department is unified behind a goal of operating with integrity and high standards in everything that we do, and continuing to strive for the best performance in the classroom and on the field."


The modern day CEO needs to mix decisiveness with engagement. It's constant learning in a frantic world of work. Coaching can help develop awareness, self - regulation and positive team behaviors to cope and thrive.
Our CEO's in different industries spanning SaaS (document management, predictive marketing, and customer communication, coaching and employee engagement) were all obviously in different situations, but there was consistency in dealing with disruption and a faster pace driven by expectations around them – customers, employees, and shareholders or stakeholders.
In dealing with this pace of change these CEO's all new to the role are leading from the front, very much in new territory. I was curious to explore what that felt like and how they dealt with it. I felt the loneliness of a leader in these conversations and how it can be a burden, not to say that these CEO's spoke of that, simply that it was palpable.
As a CEO, you have to deal decisively with the realities of the business, and build sustainable commitment from your employees over time. The CEO makes the final call and you can't please everyone all of the time.
Randy Wootton, CEO of Rocket Fuel approaches his role very purposefully, with a clear structure assessing business performance, exploring strategy and then making sure that the execution happens. Behind this, what impresses me is how he invests in himself personally, consciously recognizing and filling gaps he realizes are important for him as a new CEO.
Taking time to refresh understanding in financial management, being purposeful about networking in a community of CEO's and identifying a mentor who he knew would be able to give him guidance and encouragement are terrific steps to take when you want to ensure that you are as qualified and knowledgeable as you can be. What a great sign to your employees too, that it is important to possess a learning mindset.
Emotional connection and presence is also an important quality in leading an organization, especially when pioneering or struggling with tough deliverables – change is often hard. As Doug Miller, former CEO of Chatbox puts it "you have to be enthusiastic beyond what is rational".
Artificial Intelligence and automation are on CEO's minds. "A model of analysis that is quicker and more straightforward will emerge", says Dan Springer, CEO of Docusign.
We can see today the increased demand for data scientists and analysts, and the implication is that jobs skills required by companies will change – a known unknown. There is also a lot of unknown unknowns in the sphere of AI, how products and services will emerge, and how businesses and their employees will be affected.
In dealing with change and responsibility in leading their organizations I was not surprised to hear that these CEO's had utilized coaches to support them in their own development. Abigail Rappoport, CEO of Emoquo, a SaaS platform for digital coaching to improve productivity and generate improved emotional resilience, says "a great coach facilitates insightful reflection – you realize something different and new that you then think about for weeks. But the client has to do the work to get there". To echo this, Dan Springer also feels that some coaches don't listen sufficiently.
"Being a great listener is so important – the answers are usually in the client's minds".
There's no doubt that coaching has helped these CEO's and that successful coaching develops self-awareness, leading to positive behavior and greatly increased odds of success.
Originally from Great Britain, most of my career has been spent as a product, marketing and communications executive, creating businesses, developing software products, leading strategic planning & communications, and in the last ten years building eCommerce businesses and developing exceptional customer experiences.
I have been fortunate to work in various countries, surrounded by a vast diversity of talent and cultures. My industry domain experience spans retail, automotive, software, internet, travel and transportation industries, gained at BMW, Microsoft Corporation, Expedia Inc., and Alaska Airlines. I have deep experience in training and coaching individuals and teams within organizations, and now as an external consultant, trainer and coach. I am an ICF ACTP coach trained at The Hudson Institute.
I am based in Greater Seattle, coaching, training, and facilitating in person or remotely using video conferencing.
Outside of work, I enjoy spending as much time as possible with my wife, our two teenage children and our Boston Terrier. My healthy habit is Triathlon, and I am proud to represent Team USA at the 2018 World Championships.


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Defending against future threats: Cloudflare goes post-quantum
Bas Westerbaan
Cefan Daniel Rubin
This post is also available in 简体中文, 日本語, Français, Deutsch and Español.
There is an expiration date on the cryptography we use every day. It's not easy to read, but somewhere between 15 or 40 years, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer is expected to be built that will be able to decrypt essentially any encrypted data on the Internet today.
Luckily, there is a solution: post-quantum (PQ) cryptography has been designed to be secure against the threat of quantum computers. Just three months ago, in July 2022, after a six-year worldwide competition, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), known for AES and SHA2, announced which post-quantum cryptography they will standardize. NIST plans to publish the final standards in 2024, but we want to help drive early adoption of post-quantum cryptography.
Starting today, as a beta service, all websites and APIs served through Cloudflare support post-quantum hybrid key agreement. This is on by default1; no need for an opt-in. This means that if your browser/app supports it, the connection to our network is also secure against any future quantum computer.
We offer this post-quantum cryptography free of charge: we believe that post-quantum security should be the new baseline for the Internet.
Deploying post-quantum cryptography seems like a no-brainer with quantum computers on the horizon, but it's not without risks. To start, this is new cryptography: even with years of scrutiny, it is not inconceivable that a catastrophic attack might still be discovered. That is why we are deploying hybrids: a combination of a tried and tested key agreement together with a new one that adds post-quantum security.
We are primarily worried about what might seem mere practicalities. Even though the protocols used to secure the Internet are designed to allow smooth transitions like this, in reality there is a lot of buggy code out there: trying to create a post-quantum secure connection might fail for many reasons — for example a middlebox being confused about the larger post-quantum keys and other reasons we have yet to observe because these post-quantum key agreements are brand new. It's because of these issues that we feel it is important to deploy post-quantum cryptography early, so that together with browsers and other clients we can find and work around these issues.
In this blog post we will explain how TLS, the protocol used to secure the Internet, is designed to allow a smooth and secure migration of the cryptography it uses. Then we will discuss the technical details of the post-quantum cryptography we have deployed, and how, in practice, this migration might not be that smooth at all. We finish this blog post by explaining how you can build a better, post-quantum secure, Internet by helping us test this new generation of cryptography.
TLS: Transport Layer Security
When you're browsing a website using a secure connection, whether that's using HTTP/1.1 or QUIC, you are using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol under the hood. There are two major versions of TLS in common use today: the new TLS 1.3 (~90%) and the older TLS 1.2 (~10%), which is on the decline.
TLS 1.3 is a huge improvement over TLS 1.2: it's faster, more secure, simpler and more flexible in just the right places. This makes it easier to add post-quantum security to TLS 1.3 compared to 1.2. For the moment, we will leave it at that: we've only added post-quantum support to TLS 1.3.
So, what is TLS all about? The goal is to set up a connection between a browser and website such that
Confidentiality and integrity, no one can read along or tamper with the data undetected.
Authenticity you know you're connected to the right website; not an imposter.
Building blocks: AEAD, key agreement and signatures
Three different types of cryptography are used in TLS to reach this goal.
Symmetric encryption, or more precisely Authenticated Encryption With Associated Data (AEAD), is the workhorse of cryptography: it's used to ensure confidentiality and integrity. This is a straight-forward kind of encryption: there is a single key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the data. Without the right key you cannot decrypt the data and any tampering with the encrypted data results in an error while decrypting.
In TLS 1.3, ChaCha20-Poly1305 and AES128-GCM are in common use today.
What about quantum attacks? At first glance, it looks like we need to switch to 256-bit symmetric keys to defend against Grover's algorithm. In practice, however, Grover's algorithm doesn't parallelize well, so the currently deployed AEADs will serve just fine.
So if we can agree on a shared key to use with symmetric encryption, we're golden. But how to get to a shared key? You can't just pick a key and send it to the server: anyone listening in would know the key as well. One might think it's an impossible task, but this is where the magic of asymmetric cryptography helps out:
A key agreement, also called key exchange or key distribution, is a cryptographic protocol with which two parties can agree on a shared key without an eavesdropper being able to learn anything. Today the X25519 Elliptic Curve Diffie–Hellman protocol (ECDH) is the de facto standard key agreement used in TLS 1.3. The security of X25519 is based on the discrete logarithm problem for elliptic curves, which is vulnerable to quantum attacks, as it is easily solved by a cryptographically relevant quantum computer using Shor's algorithm. The solution is to use a post-quantum key agreement, such as Kyber.
A key agreement only protects against a passive attacker. An active attacker, that can intercept and modify messages (MitM), can establish separate shared keys with both the server and the browser, re-encrypting all data passing through. To solve this problem, we need the final piece of cryptography.
With a digital signature algorithm, such as RSA or ECDSA, there are two keys: a public and a private key. Only with the private key, one can create a signature for a message. Anyone with the corresponding public key can check whether a signature is indeed valid for a given message. These digital signatures are at the heart of TLS certificates that are used to authenticate websites.
Both RSA and ECDSA are vulnerable to quantum attacks. We haven't replaced those with post-quantum signatures, yet. The reason is that authentication is less urgent: we only need to have them replaced by the time a sufficiently large quantum computer is built, whereas any data secured by a vulnerable key agreement today can be stored and decrypted in the future. Even though we have more time, deploying post-quantum authentication will be quite challenging.
So, how do these building blocks come together to create TLS?
High-level overview of TLS 1.3
A TLS connection starts with a handshake which is used to authenticate the server and derive a shared key. The browser (client) starts by sending a ClientHello message that contains a list of the AEADs, signature algorithms, and key agreement methods it supports. To remove a roundtrip, the client is allowed to make a guess of what the server supports and start the key agreement by sending one or more client keyshares. That guess might be correct (on the left in the diagram below) or the client has to retry (on the right).
Protocol flow for server-authenticated TLS 1.3 with a supported client keyshare on the left and a HelloRetryRequest on the right.
Key agreement
Before we explain the rest of this interaction, let's dig into the key agreement: what is a keyshare? The way the key agreement for Kyber and X25519 work is different: the first is a Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM), while the latter is a Diffie–Hellman (DH) style agreement. The latter is more flexible, but for TLS it doesn't make a difference.
The shape of a KEM and Diffie–Hellman key agreement in TLS-compatible handshake is the same.
In both cases the client sends a client keyshare to the server. From this client keyshare the server generates the shared key. The server then returns a server keyshare with which the client can also compute the shared key.
Going back to the TLS 1.3 flow: when the server receives the ClientHello message it picks an AEAD (cipher), signature algorithm and client keyshare that it supports. It replies with a ServerHello message that contains the chosen AEAD and the server keyshare for the selected key agreement. With the AEAD and shared key locked in, the server starts encrypting data (shown with blue boxes).
Together with the AEAD and server keyshare, the server sends a signature, the handshake signature, on the transcript of the communication so far together with a certificate (chain) for the public key that it used to create the signature. This allows the client to authenticate the server: it checks whether it trusts the certificate authority (e.g. Let's Encrypt) that certified the public key and whether the signature verifies for the messages it sent and received so far. This not only authenticates the server, but it also protects against downgrade attacks.
Downgrade protection
We cannot upgrade all clients and servers to post-quantum cryptography at once. Instead, there will be a transition period where only some clients and some servers support post-quantum cryptography. The key agreement negotiation in TLS 1.3 allows this: during the transition servers and clients will still support non post-quantum key agreements, and can fall back to it if necessary.
This flexibility is great, but also scary: if both client and server support post-quantum key agreement, we want to be sure that they also negotiate the post-quantum key agreement. This is the case in TLS 1.3, but it is not obvious: the keyshares, the chosen keyshare and the list of supported key agreements are all sent in plain text. Isn't it possible for an attacker in the middle to remove the post-quantum key agreements? This is called a downgrade attack.
This is where the transcript comes in: the handshake signature is taken over all messages received and sent by the server so far. This includes the supported key agreements and the key agreement that was picked. If an attacker changes the list of supported key agreements that the client sends, then the server will not notice. However, the client checks the server's handshake signature against the list of supported key agreements it has actually sent and thus will detect the mischief.
The downgrade attack problems are much more complicated for TLS 1.2, which is one of the reasons we're hesitant to retrofit post-quantum security in TLS 1.2.
Wrapping up the handshake
The last part of the server's response is "server finished", a message authentication code (MAC) on the whole transcript so far. Most of the work has been done by the handshake signature, but in other operating modes of TLS without handshake signature, such as session resumption, it's important.
With the chosen AEAD and server keyshare, the client can compute the shared key and decrypt and verify the certificate chain, handshake signature and handshake MAC. We did not mention it before, but the shared key is not used directly for encryption. Instead, for good measure, it's mixed together with communication transcripts, to derive several specific keys for use during the handshake and the main connection afterwards.
To wrap up the handshake, the client sends its own handshake MAC, and can then proceed to send application-specific data encrypted with the keys derived during the handshake.
Hello! Retry Request?
What we just sketched is the desirable flow where the client sends a keyshare that is supported by the server. That might not be the case. If the server doesn't accept any key agreements advertised by the client, then it will tell the client and abort the connection.
If there is a key agreement that both support, but for which the client did not send a keyshare, then the server will respond with a HelloRetryRequest (HRR) message requesting a keyshare of a specific key agreement that the client supports as shown on the diagram on the right. In turn, the client responds with a new ClientHello with the selected keyshare.
This is not the whole story: a server is also allowed to send a HelloRetryRequest to request a different key agreement that it prefers over those for which the client sent shares. For instance, a server can send a HelloRetryRequest to a post-quantum key agreement if the client supports it, but didn't send a keyshare for it.
HelloRetryRequests are rare today. Almost every server supports the X25519 key-agreement and almost every client (98% today) sends a X25519 keyshare. Earlier P-256 was the de facto standard and for a long time many browsers would send both a P-256 and X25519 keyshare to prevent a HelloRetryRequest. As we will discuss later, we might not have the luxury to send two post-quantum keyshares.
That's the theory
TLS 1.3 is designed to be flexible in the cryptography it uses without sacrificing security or performance, which is convenient for our migration to post-quantum cryptography. That is the theory, but there are some serious issues in practice — we'll go into detail later on. But first, let's check out the post-quantum key agreements we've deployed.
What we deployed
Today we have enabled support for the X25519Kyber512Draft00 and X25519Kyber768Draft00 key agreements using TLS identifiers 0xfe30 and 0xfe31 respectively. These are exactly the same key agreements we enabled on a limited number of zones this July.
These two key agreements are a combination, a hybrid, of the classical X25519 and the new post-quantum Kyber512 and Kyber768 respectively and in that order. That means that even if Kyber turns out to be insecure, the connection remains as secure as X25519.
Kyber, for now, is the only key agreement that NIST has selected for standardization. Kyber is very light on the CPU: it is faster than X25519 which is already known for its speed. On the other hand, its keyshares are much bigger:
Size keyshares(in bytes)
Ops/sec (higher is better)
Algorithm PQ Client Server Client Server
Kyber512 ✅ 800 768 50,000 100,000
Kyber768 ✅ 1,184 1,088 31,000 70,000
X25519 ❌ 32 32 17,000 17,000
Size and CPU performance compared between X25519 and Kyber. Performance varies considerably by hardware platform and implementation constraints and should be taken as a rough indication only.
Kyber is expected to change in minor, but backwards incompatible ways, before final standardization by NIST in 2024. Also, the integration with TLS, including the choice and details of the hybrid key agreement, are not yet finalized by the TLS working group. Once they are, we will adopt them promptly.
Because of this, we will not support the preliminary key agreements announced today for the long term; they're provided as a beta service. We will post updates on our deployment on pq.cloudflareresearch.com and announce it on the IETF PQC mailing list.
Now that we know how TLS negotiation works in theory, and which key agreements we're adding, how could it fail?
Where things might break in practice
Protocol ossification
Protocols are often designed with flexibility in mind, but if that flexibility is not exercised in practice, it's often lost. This is called protocol ossification. The roll-out of TLS 1.3 was difficult because of several instances of ossification. One poignant example is TLS' version negotiation: there is a version field in the ClientHello message that indicates the latest version supported by the client. A new version was assigned to TLS 1.3, but in testing it turned out that many servers would not fallback properly to TLS 1.2, but crash the connection instead. How do we deal with ossification?
Today, TLS 1.3 masquerades itself as TLS 1.2 down to including many legacy fields in the ClientHello. The actual version negotiation is moved into a new extension to the message. A TLS 1.2 server will ignore the new extension and ignorantly continue with TLS 1.2, while a TLS 1.3 server picks up on the extension and continues with TLS 1.3 proper.
Protocol grease
How do we prevent ossification? Having learnt from this experience, browsers will regularly advertise dummy versions in this new version field, so that misbehaving servers are caught early on. This is not only done for the new version field, but in many other places in the TLS handshake, and presciently also for the key agreement identifiers. Today, 40% of browsers send two client keyshares: one X25519 and another a bogus 1-byte keyshare to keep key agreement flexibility.
This behavior is standardized in RFC 8701: Generate Random Extensions And Sustain Extensibility (GREASE) and we call it protocol greasing, as in "greasing the joints" from Adam Langley's metaphor of protocols having rusty joints in need of oil.
This keyshare grease helps, but it is not perfect, because it is the size of the keyshare that in this case causes the most concern.
Fragmented ClientHello
Post-quantum keyshares are big. The two Kyber hybrids are 832 and 1,216 bytes. Compared to that, X25519 is tiny with only 32 bytes. It is not unlikely that some implementations will fail when seeing such large keyshares.
Our biggest concern is with the larger Kyber768 based keyshare. A ClientHello with the smaller 832 byte Kyber512-based keyshare will just barely fit in a typical network packet. On the other hand, the larger 1,216 byte Kyber768-keyshare will typically fragment the ClientHello into two packets.
Assembling packets together isn't free: it requires you to keep track of the partial messages around. Usually this is done transparently by the operating system's TCP stack, but optimized middleboxes and load balancers that look at each packet separately, have to (and might not) keep track of the connections themselves.
QUIC
The situation for HTTP/3, which is built on QUIC, is particularly interesting. Instead of a simple port number chosen by the client (as in TCP), a QUIC packet from the client contains a connection ID that is chosen by the server. Think of it as "your reference" and "our reference" in snailmail. This allows a QUIC load-balancer to encode the particular machine handling the connection into the connection ID.
When opening a connection, the QUIC client doesn't know which connection ID the server would like and sends a random one instead. If the client needs multiple initial packets, such as with a big ClientHello, then the client will use the same random connection ID. Even though multiple initial packets are allowed by the QUIC standard, a QUIC load balancer might not expect this, and won't be able to refer to an underlying TCP connection.
Aside from these hard failures, soft failures, such as performance degradation are also of concern: if it's too slow to load, a website might as well have been broken to begin with.
Back in 2019 in a joint experiment with Google, we deployed two post-quantum key agreements: CECPQ2, based on NTRU-HRSS, and CECPQ2b, based on SIKE. NTRU-HRSS is very similar to Kyber: it's a bit larger and slower. Results from 2019 are very promising: X25519+NTRU-HRSS (orange line) is hard to distinguish from X25519 on its own (blue line).
We will continue to keep a close eye on performance, especially on the tail performance: we want a smooth transition for everyone, from the fastest to the slowest clients on the Internet.
How to help out
The Internet is a very heterogeneous system. To find all issues, we need sufficient numbers of diverse testers. We are working with browsers to add support for these key agreements, but there may not be one of these browsers in every network.
So, to help the Internet out, try and switch a small part of your traffic to Cloudflare domains to use these new key agreement methods. We have open-sourced forks for BoringSSL, Go and quic-go. For BoringSSL and Go, check out the sample code here. If you have any issues, please let us know at [email protected]. We will be discussing any issues and workarounds at the IETF TLS working group.
The transition to a post-quantum secure Internet is urgent, but not without challenges. Today we have deployed a preliminary post-quantum key agreement on all our servers — a sizable portion of the Internet — so that we can all start testing the big migration today. We hope that come 2024, when NIST puts a bow on Kyber, we will all have laid the groundwork for a smooth transition to a Post-Quantum Internet.
1We only support these post-quantum key agreements in protocols based on TLS 1.3 including HTTP/3. There is one exception: for the moment we disable these hybrid key exchanges for websites in FIPS-mode.
Birthday Week Post-Quantum Research Cryptography Security
Bas Westerbaan |@bwesterb


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A Meeting of the above named Council convened by the Council was held in the Oak Room, Thornborough Hall on 21st September 2015.
Mrs Sheila Simms was pleased to see that the verges in town had been cut. She was upset to see the diagonal path across the front lawn at Thornborough Hall caused by the sorting office staff walking to and from their cars each day.
3162. APOLOGIES were received from Cllr Begley.
3163. To receive any Declaration of Interest under the Council's Code of Conduct or Members' Register of Interest – Cllr Borman declared an interest if Brentwood was discussed later on in the meeting.
3164. MINUTES OF MEETING held on Monday, 17th August 2015 were approved as a correct record.
Richmondshire District Council had responded to the query about the roof height of the new eco house at Quarry Hills and confirmed that it complied with permission granted.
Martin Foster from Mulberry Homes felt that it was too early to hold a meeting to discuss their project on Moor Road since he still had no further information.
NYCC Highways had admitted that they had not taken the proposed parking restrictions for Brentwood any further forward since there had been objections from householders. It was agreed that Highways should be pursued about this matter and a letter would be sent from the Town Council to those householders affected. District Cllr Duff would also contact Highways.
Richmondshire District Council Planning Committee would discuss the planning application by the Leyburn Dental Surgery at their Meeting on 30th September.
Richmondshire District Council would hold a Lower Wensleydale Area Partnership Meeting at Constable Burton on 24th September.
Richmondshire District Council Planners had granted a one-off permission and allowed contractors to access their site via Dale Grove since their plant machinery was too large for the Fords Farm lane access.
NALC is now campaigning the government to exempt local councils from business rates on public toilets. The Town Council currently has to pay £1,400 p.a. in business rates for the Kelberdale Terrace toilets.
3166. REPORTS FROM MEETINGS ATTENDED BY COUNCILLORS – There were no meetings.
d. Councillors ratified their decision to accept a financial contribution of £471 from NYCC towards urban grass cutting for the remainder of this year and to accept the quote from A & J Garden Services Ltd to carry out this work.
e. Dales & Bowland Community Interest Company – Councillors agreed to pay a donation of £500 towards the Wensleydale Flyer Bus Service on Sundays to keep this service running.
f. Councillors agreed to pay NYCC to replace the car park signs for the RDC car park in the Town. Richmondshire District Council will also contribute to this.
g. Richmondshire District Council: Gambling Act 2005 and Gambling Policy 2015 – Consultation draft of Statement of Policy for RDC is available online at www.richmondshire.gov.uk/community-and-living/have-your-say. Consultation ends on 23rd October 2015.
h. NYCC Highways – Councillors strongly objected to the proposed removal of a grit bin from Dale Grove (cul de sac at lowest end). NYCC will be asked not to remove the bin until a response has been received.
i. Bonfire and Fireworks Display, 5th November 2015 – Councillors granted permission to Wensleydale Round Table to hold the event on the Shawl Playing Field.
j. Queen's Jubilee – Councillors did not agree to the request by Cllr Borman to hold formal celebrations in town. However, it was agreed to consider marking the Queen's 90th birthday next year instead.
k. Murphy's Fair – Councillors agreed to the request to hold a fair in Leyburn from Friday, 30th October to Sunday, 1st November 2015.
l. The Clerk will set a date for the next Town Council Surgery for one evening in October.
m. Rural Action Yorkshire (RAY) – Councillors agreed to taking up membership at a cost of £35 p.a.. RAY offers practical help with preparing Parish Plans.
n. Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority – A Parish Forum will be held at TOSH on 22nd September.
o. Yorvik Homes, proposed development of new homes on Brentwood, adjacent to the Medical Centre - Cllr Borman objected to this for many reasons and Councillors were asked to visit an event organised by Yorvik Homes at the Bolton Arms on the 22nd September to view the plans. This matter will be discussed at the October Meeting of the Town Council.
c. 15/00575/LBC Listed Building Consent to repair part of south elevation following removal of render, removal of brick and blockwork around existing openings and replacing with stonework as existing, take down and re-build the bulging and perished wall section and install new lintels over existing openings at Walk Mill, Mill Lane.
d. 15/00624/LBC Listed Building Consent to dismantle and re-build a 2.8 m x 4.3 m section of the north east buttress wall with stones to be clearly referenced, stacked and re-erected in their original positions at Middleham Bridge.
e. 15/00653/FULL Full planning permission for proposed single storey shed and garage in rear garden at 22A Maythorne.
With regard to item (e), Councillors felt that the shed was too large for the location.
a. Councillors agreed to a request from C. Askew and T Norton of Hawes for a permanent pitch on the Market to sell socks, underwear, hankies.
b. Councillors agreed to request from Rapinder Singh and Chloe Howard of Skipton for a permanent pitch on the Market to sell Marks chainstore clothing. It was agreed that they should not have bags on the stall unless the other bag trader is away.
c. National Association of British Market Authorities – Councillors agreed not to take up membership for this year. Information sent will be circulated.
Councillors ratified their decision to purchase new play matting for Maythorne Play Area at a cost of £917.
NYCC will be reminded once again about the urgent need to replace the damaged bollards in the Market Place.
The ice cream seller will be reminded to park his van on the normal parking bays below the market shelter.
Cllr Borman requested that the Agenda is set out like the recommended YLCA agenda.
Cllr Harper reported that the residents of Park View were pleased with the grass cutting that had taken place there.
The owners of Eastfield Lodge will be asked to cut back their hedge, which is now overhanging the pavement.
Cllr Sanderson offered the Town Council a very old framed map of Leyburn that he had been given.
Cllr Medley commented on how dark it is at night at the bottom of Shawl Terrace.
The old trough near to the bus stop on Richmond Road is very overgrown.
The Clerk gave Councillors copies of the NALC Finance Standing Orders and asked for these to be discussed at the October Meeting of the Council.
3173. DATE OF NEXT MEETING: Monday, 19th October 2015 in the Oak Room, Thornborough Hall at 7.00 p.m.
Parish Plan meeting on Thursday, 24th September 2015 in the Oak Room, Thornborough Hall at 7.00 p.m.


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